When the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts have the constitutional right to fire Scout leaders for being gay, my sister was caught in an agonizing moral dilemma: allowing her son to become a member of America’s most family-friendly group meant dishonoring part of her family.
The political backlash since the ruling against the Boy Scouts is clear to anyone who reads the local papers. Many cities, believing the Scouts are engaging in discrimination, have told local Scout troops that they can’t use parks, schools and other municipal sites. Companies and charities have withdrawn hundreds of thousands of dollars in support. But what isn’t so easy to see is the division the Supreme Court ruling created in millions of families like mine.
When my sister first called to tell me she was thinking of putting Ricky in the Cub Scouts (a program run by the Boy Scouts of America), I could hear the torment in her voice. Ricky is a bright, athletic boy who suffers from a shyness so paralyzing he doesn’t have any friends. The other day my sister asked who he had played with during recess. “Nobody,” he mumbled, looking at the floor. “I just scratched the mosquito bites on my leg till it was time to go back to class.”
It breaks my sister’s heart to see what Ricky’s shyness is doing to him. Karate, softball and soccer leagues helped, but not nearly enough. In another age, my sister wouldn’t have thought twice about letting him join the Scouts. But now the decision has taken on an unsettling ethical dimension.
“I don’t understand why they’re making me take sides in my own family,” she said about the Boy Scout policy. “In order to help my son I have to abandon my brother.”
My sister was up against some disturbing questions. Should she violate her sense of family loyalty for the social needs of her son? Or keep her values intact and deny her son the possibility of overcoming his shyness? By saying that troops have the right to fire gay leaders, the Boy Scouts created the unimaginable: a moral quandary about joining the most wholesome group in America.
My sister was afraid she’d be doing the same thing many parents did a generation ago when they joined country clubs that didn’t allow blacks and Jews. They, too, must have rationalized their membership by saying the clubs’ wholesome activities would be good for their kids.
There was one thing my sister and her husband were not conflicted about: me. “No way are we putting Ricky in the Scouts if this is an issue for you,” she said. “Blood is thicker than camping.” Still, she wanted to know how I’d feel if my nephew became a Scout.
I felt completely torn, but I answered with as much certainty as I could muster. “I am not getting in the way of what’s best for a 6-year-old,” I told her. Ironically, I found myself trying to persuade her to let Ricky join the Scouts. It’s families that teach morality, I argued, not after-school groups. Besides, I added, it’s not like the issue will come up during any of the Scouting activities.
Or will it? Is it really inconceivable that kids who know why the president of the United States was impeached would ask their Scout leader why gay people aren’t allowed in the organization? And what would the scoutmaster’s response be? I was shaken by the possibility of my nephew hearing a trusted grown-up trying to convince him that his uncle Michael is someone to be scared of.
One night I had a terrible dream of a Boy Scout official pointing me out to Ricky and saying, “See that guy? The one you love more than any other man except your father? He’s not allowed in here.”
I woke up feeling a kind of enraged helplessness. How could I mean so much to my family and so little to so many outside it? Ultimately, I knew I could live with the indignity of my nephew belonging to a group that discriminates against his uncle; what I couldn’t live with was the guilt of denying Ricky a chance to improve his life.
How can Ricky’s parents know what the right thing to do is in this situation? For starters, they plan to get more information before they make a decision. And so my sister, a mom torn between her devotion to her brother and concern for her son, will go to next month’s Scout meeting with her husband.
Will they put Ricky in the Scouts? I don’t know. But as the date of the meeting approaches, I can’t help thinking how unfair it is that my sister will have to pass under that imaginary sign that hangs over every Scout gathering: YOUR SON IS WELCOME, BUT YOUR BROTHER IS NOT.
